The billionaire Barclay brothers made payments of more than £3 million to a shareholder of Maybourne Hotel Group as an inducement to sell them his shares, the High Court was told yesterday.

Derek Quinlan, the former Dublin tax inspector who owned 35 per cent of the company, is alleged to have channelled the payments into his wife’s bank accounts to prevent the money being seized to pay off debts he owed to Nama, Ireland’s so-called “bad bank”. The claims were made by Philip Marshall, QC, representing Paddy McKillen, the Belfast-born property developer, who has a 36 per cent stake. He